Welcome to episode two of our podcast. This time we kick things off with our new Mailbag segment, in which Senior Program Officer Paul Tarini answers questions from listeners (time stamp: 1:12). Next, in a conversation with Assistant Vice President of Research and Evaluation and former Pioneer Team Director Brian Quinn, social scientist, innovator, teacher and recent What’s Next Health guest BJ Fogg talks about the need to help people understand how behavior works so they can be more effective in changing their own behavior (4:34). Then we listen in on RWJF’s first-ever Pitch Day, emceed by the Foundation’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Thomas Goetz, and featuring judges like angel investor Esther Dyson and NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam (8:10). Finally, Senior Program Officer and physician Mike Painter shares a personal story and a plea for getting the human motivators right in health care (16:11). This episode is hosted by program associate (and former TV broadcaster) Christine Nieves.

We hope you enjoy listening, and we hope you learn something; we certainly did. And there’s more to learn: Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below, as well as any questions that you’d like us to answer in a future episode.

Guests

BJ Fogg, director of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, is a social scientist, innovator, and teacher who creates systems to change behavior.

In addition, the Pitch Day segment of this episode features the following people: